I’ve had plenty of bad food in my life. In college, I was eating a bag of chocolate covered pretzels when I bit into a hard one. I thought it was just thick chocolate and so I bit down harder. Bad decision on my part. It turns out there was a piece of metal melted into the chocolate. Yucky! No more chocolate covered pretzels for me.
I’ve also seen numerous bad movies in my short life. Armageddon with Bruce Willis was atrocious. At times I felt like I was watching an action movie on speed. It was jumpy and overwhelming. I’m not entirely sure the director knew what he was trying to accomplish. It was a mess.
When it comes to books, I’ve read plenty of boring books. I’ve also read many books that made me question the ethics used by the books’ publishers. However, I have a hard time saying that a book is bad as all books are worthy of reading at some point by some people. Books make us human. They shape cultures and communities. Books record our lives in words and pictures. Books are brilliant and beautiful and sometimes bittersweet but never bad in the sense of bad like Starbucks coffee or cell phones.
I just finished a professional development text I was sent as a member of the AMLE Book club. On a side note, I just found out that the AMLE is discontinuing it’s book club as an add-on for members. So sad. Anyway, I just completed the most recent book Getting Them to Talk by Susan Edwards. It wasn’t great and it wasn’t a complete waste of time. It lacked originality and depth. It read more like a collection of resources regarding class discussions one could easily find online than it did a quality professional text. Sure, the book included some good ideas about collegial discussions and class grouping methods. However, the rest of the book was filler or dictionary style definitions regarding discussion terminology, which is all stuff most educators learned in college or by visiting some cool websites or blogs. I’m glad I read it because had I not, I always would have wondered what I missed. I didn’t miss much, but I learned a little. So, of course, like all books, this text deserved to be published and should be read by those teachers looking to incorporate effective class discussions into the curriculum.
Holteacher Perspective 